FOX’s Joel Klatt continues to rank Ohio State as one of nation’s best teams without playing a game

FOX’s Joel Klatt released his top ten again after this past weekend and he still has Ohio State among the best despite not playing a game.

There are a few ways we can go about these whole rankings shenanigans that have come about this season because of the novel coronavirus pandemic. With the staggered starts of conferences, pause and restarts, and missing personnel, it’s thrown a monkey wrench in a process that’s already flawed to begin with. And yeah, the AP and Amway Coaches Poll don’t really matter at this point, but there still seems to be a lot of debate that’s resulted.

The way I see it is you can do one of three things. First, you can simply not rank teams that have yet to play, you can rank a team a little lower until you see it play, or you can just rank a team based on how good you think it is despite not seeing said team take a snap on the football field yet.

FOX’s Joel Klatt falls under that last category, and it would tend to be the way I would lean as well. I mean, that’s how all these polls are dreamt up anyway during the preseason, so why not?

Klatt releases his opinion on the top ten teams each week, and he did so again after this past weekend. And where does he have Ohio State? In the same spot as previous weeks, at No. 2, just behind Clemson and in front of Alabama.

The rest of his top ten consists of Georgia (4), Notre Dame (5), Penn State (6), North Carolina (7), Texas A&M (8), Florida (9), and Oklahoma State (10).

I say give Klatt credit for not copping out and simply leaving Big Ten and Pac-12 teams out of the mix until they play, but maybe that’s just me. Either way, I do think Ohio State is going to be fantastic once things get going, and everyone else will be forced to reconcile putting the Buckeyes high up in the polls and other opinion rankings.

And then there’s the College Football Playoff Rankings on the horizon. That one really matters and who knows what metrics will go into all of that. But that’s for another day and should be extremely interesting.

 

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